Sweet Home Alaska

by Carole Estby Dagg

  CHAPTER 12

  A Mouse Ate My Shoelaces

  MENDEL WAS SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT, PROBABLY SO he could tell the driver what gear he should be using. He patted the seat next to him. Terpsichore pretended not to see him.

  As she scanned the girls’ side of the bus, a boy with a waxed crew cut in the seat behind Mendel hooted, “Who’s the clodhopper?”

  The boy poked Mendel in the shoulder. “I said, who’s the clodhopper? She your girlfriend?”

  Mendel turned in his seat to answer the shoulder-poker. “She’s Trip,” Mendel said, in the kind of shouting-whisper the whole bus could hear. “And she’s not my girlfriend.”

  Terpsichore winced. Mendel must have heard the twins call her Trip.

  “You can see why people call her ‘Trip.’” The shoulderpoker jabbed a finger at Terpsichore as she stood at the front of the bus, still holding her muddy shoe. He sniggered and looked over his shoulder to see if all the boys agreed with him.

  They did. But at least Mendel had clarified that he was not her boyfriend. She felt like bopping the obnoxious boy with her shoe. Instead she glared her basilisk glare. Once she had it perfected it would be so lethal that, like the legendary basilisk snake, one glance would still a man’s heart forever. So far she hadn’t killed anyone with a look, but even at half power, she could usually halt any noisome behavior from her sisters. Apparently she hadn’t developed enough power in her eye beam for it to work on boys. They kept on sniggering and pointing.

  “Everyone to a seat,” the bus driver called. He meant Terpsichore.

  “Psst, squeeze in with me.” A girl with an orange sweater scooted next to her seatmate to provide six inches of room for Terpsichore. The older girl sitting next to the window begrudgingly slid over too.

  “Thanks!” Terpsichore said. She plopped down but almost slid off the seat when the bus lurched forward.

  “We girls have to stick together,” the orange sweater girl said. “What happened to your shoe?”

  “A mouse ate my shoelace last night.” Terpsichore held up her shoe to show where the lace had been nibbled off.

  The older girl, probably an eighth-grader, glanced briefly at the shoe and wrinkled her nose in disgust as Terpsichore peeled off her muddy sock and balled it and put it in one of her jacket pockets. She took a crochet-trimmed handkerchief from her other pocket and wiped her hands.

  “Here, let me hold your tablet and lunch pail while you fix your shoe,” the orange sweater girl said.

  Terpsichore gave a shuddering sigh, forbidding her eyes to tear up. What a start to her first day of school in Alaska! With another sigh and trying to smile, she handed over her tablet and lunch pail.

  Terpsichore started to pluck out the gnawed-on shoelace. At the next rut in the road she had to clutch the rail on the back of the seat in front of her to keep from sliding off the edge of her own seat, and the shoe slipped off her lap. As she reached under the seat in front of her to reclaim it, the bus bounced over a fallen tree limb and she hit her head.

  “Fiddlesticks!” Terpsichore straightened, rubbing the back of her head. “I guess I’ll have to fix my shoe later.” She leaned over to slide her flopping shoe back on. “Thanks for holding my stuff.” She knew her cheeks must be as bright as her seatmate’s sweater.

  The orange sweater girl acted as if it was perfectly normal to walk onto the bus wearing one shoe. “My name is Gloria.” Her grin was, well, glorious and Terpsichore began to feel that maybe the day would start to go better.

  “My mother named me Gloria after Gloria Swanson.” She touched her crescent-shaped spit curls plastered against her forehead and one cheek. “I was in drama club at school.”

  Her collar was jauntily turned up in the back, and Terpsichore’s eyes widened as she took a closer look at Gloria’s mouth. “Is that Tangee lipstick?” she whispered.

  “My mother won’t let me wear even Tangee until I’m thirteen.” She leaned toward Terpsichore. “It’s just a little Vaseline.”

  Spit curls, tilted-up collar, pretend lipstick, and drama club. Terpsichore wasn’t sure this was a girl her mother would approve of, but Terpsichore already liked her.

  “I’m Terpsichore,” Terpsichore said. “My mother named me after the Greek Muse of Dance.”

  “Did your mother want you to be a dancer?”

  “If she did, I’m sure she’s given up that idea by now,” Terpsichore said. She sighed again, and not just because of her shoe. Her mother had such grand ambitions for all her daughters. At least Cally and Polly were everything her mother had hoped for.

  • • •

  When they reached Matanuska and filed off the bus, the seventh- and eighth-graders peeled off to the line of older children, and the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders were herded into a crowded classroom. There were only ten desks, and those were already filled by the old-timer kids whose families had settled the valley before the Palmer Colony. Folding chairs had been moved in and crammed every which way into the classroom for the new kids.

  Gloria found a chair, but there wasn’t another vacant spot next to her. As Terpsichore picked her way through the maze to find a seat near the back of the room, her lunch box clanged against a metal chair and she looked guiltily toward the teacher. Maybe the clang had only sounded loud in her own ears, because the teacher continued to stand with a patient smile until all the students had stowed away their lunches and wiggled out of their coats.

  “Welcome to the Territory of Alaska! I’m Miss Burgess, and I’ll be teaching the combined fourth, fifth, and sixth grades for your last two weeks of school.”

  She looked nice, with a soft ruff of auburn hair around her face, the kind of hairstyle you had to set in pin curls every night. But trousers? Terpsichore half stood so she could double-check. Yes, Miss Burgess was wearing trousers, and they were tucked into tall, laced boots. Mother would faint!

  “We know that all of your families need your help to help get crops planted, so there won’t be any homework”—she paused for cheers—“for the rest of the year. What we’ll do in the two weeks left is focus on helping the newcomers learn about Alaska and make new friends. Let’s introduce ourselves, shall we?”

  She wrote her name in perfect cursive on the blackboard. “As I said, I’m Miss Burgess, and I’ve lived in Matanuska for two years, since I finished my education degree at the University of Washington. I came up for a year for the adventure of it, and decided to stay.”

  She smiled again. “Let’s start in the front, and when it’s your turn, come on up and tell us your name, where you’re from, where your family will be living, and one thing you’d like everyone to know about you.”

  As old-timers from the front row trooped up, Terpsichore kept her eyes straight ahead so it would look like she was paying attention as she finished pulling the mouse-nibbled lace from each eyelet. After putting the old shoelace in her pocket, she started threading the twine through the eyelets.

  She paid more attention when the Palmer Colony children started coming to the front. Somewhere among the Palmer kids she hoped to find a new best friend. Maybe it would be Gloria. The only one she recognized from the trip up was Mendel. Nearly everyone on the ship had been too busy upchucking to do much socializing.

  If she were back in Little Bear Lake, Eileen would already be coming up with ideas for fun things they could do that summer. They had planned to help Miss Thompson with the summer reading club at the library, but Palmer didn’t even have a library. They had planned to learn to do the backstroke in Little Bear Lake, but Alaska would be too cold for swimming. Would she ever have a friend like Eileen again?

  Most of the boys were automatic rejects for a new best friend. Teddy, the crew-cut boy, had been the best batter on his baseball team at home, so he claimed. Another had a stamp collection. Several girls had won ribbons in 4-H. Gloria had played the title role in their school production
of Heidi. Then it was Mendel’s turn.

  “My name is Mendel Theodore Peterson. I’m from Wisconsin, and my family will be moving to lot one-eighty-five out at the Butte, about twelve miles southeast of Palmer, across the Matanuska River. I’m going into sixth grade, and the first thing you probably noticed about me is my handsome set of dental appliances.” Instead of trying to hide the mess of metal in his mouth, he grinned to show it off and pointed to his wires to explain how they worked.

  “See this arch wire? The arch wires sustain pressure on the tooth to activate a biochemical process called bone remodeling, during which the periodontal membrane is gradually stretched on one side of the tooth and compressed on the other.”

  Nobody seemed too interested in a lesson on torture by tooth, not even Miss Burgess, who interrupted him and asked him to tell about one of his interests.

  “I’m an amateur entomologist, and I look forward to collecting specimens of all thirty-five species of Alaska mosquitoes,” he said. He scanned the room to see if there was any interest in entomology, but as far as Terpsichore could see, there were no other bug boys in the class. Just the word mosquitoes made her bites itch.

  The girl next to her went up and explained how she had organized a girls’ basketball team back in Minnesota. “It’s your turn,” she whispered when she returned to her seat.

  Listening for a new friend, Terpsichore had forgotten to finish threading the string in her shoe. Should she carry it, leave it behind, or try to wear it? She dropped the shoe to the ground, slipped her foot into it, and shuffled toward the front of the room.

  Crew Cut, the boy who’d been sitting behind Mendel on the bus, stomped on her dangling shoelace.

  Terpsichore tugged her shoe free with a stumbling lurch. “Trip, her name is Trip,” Crew Cut said in a mock whisper as he jabbed his chubby finger in her direction.

  “Terpsichore, my name is Terpsichore,” she hissed. But the damage was done. She ignored the giggles and whispers of “Trip,” and tried to walk on to the front of the room as if she had not almost nose-dived to the floor.

  “What’s wrong with your shoe?” Miss Burgess asked, kneeling to take a closer look.

  Terpsichore’s stomach felt almost as sloshy as it had on the ship, and her cheeks felt feverish. She was probably coming down with measles. “A mouse ate my shoelace,” she mumbled. What a miserable start to the day!

  Mendel waved his hand, but didn’t wait to be called on. “I bet it was a vole, a Myodes rutilus, a northern red-backed vole.”

  Miss Burgess ignored him and smiled at Terpsichore. “A mouse ate my shoelace . . . That’s funny! I bet a lot of you have great stories to tell about coming to Alaska too.” She put a hand on Terpsichore’s shoulder, and then stood. “This afternoon at writing time, you can each write a real or pretend letter to a friend back home about the funniest thing that has happened to you so far in Alaska. Thanks for that, Terpsichore.”

  Miss Burgess laughed again and called up the next student, forgetting that Terpsichore had not had her turn in front of the class. Just as well; Terpsichore couldn’t think of any interesting thing she wanted everyone to know about herself.

  • • •

  That afternoon, Teddy announced Terpsichore’s arrival as she climbed the steps to the bus behind Gloria. “Here comes Trip the Clodhopper!”

  Terpsichore pointed at Teddy. “And there sits an uncouth person from the back of beyond.”

  He thrust his foot into the aisle, but Terpsichore was onto his tricks and daintily stepped over it.

  “Uncouth person from the back of beyond,” Gloria repeated. “That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that line.”

  This time Terpsichore and Gloria got a seat to themselves. “You didn’t get a chance in class to tell about yourself,” Gloria said. “So what were you known for back home?”

  “Pop says I’m a wizard with pumpkin. I can turn it into cookies and soup and at least a dozen other dishes. Not as exciting as starring in a play, is it?”

  “If you like cookies it is! And I sure do. I think there are lots of ways of being creative. Maybe you’ll write a famous cookbook someday,” Gloria said. “Hey, where’s your tent site? I hope we’re close together!”

  “We’re in row F, the back row, number twelve.”

  “Yes!” Gloria grabbed Terpsichore’s arm. “My family is in row C, number fifteen, a couple rows ahead of you and a couple tents over. We’re almost neighbors!”

  CHAPTER 13

  Letter Home

  General Delivery, Palmer, Alaska Territory

  May 27, 1935

  Dear Eileen,

  For today’s writing assignment we all have to write a letter home, and try to include the funniest thing that has happened to us in Alaska. My teacher thinks a mouse eating your shoelace is funny but I don’t. Instead I will write about what I like and don’t like about the Palmer Colony. I don’t have much paper so I’ll write small.

  Things I Don’t Like:

  Two-holer outhouses—the smaller hole is for little kids so they don’t fall in the pit. Yuck!

  Mosquitoes and horseflies—we are all covered in itchy welts. Matthew’s eye got swollen shut with one bite, and I have twelve welts on just one shin!

  Crowded-together tents instead of houses.

  No library—I will go crazy if I don’t get something new to read!

  No radio! Jumping grasshoppers and leaping lizards! If you have a radio in Chicago please tell me how Orphan Annie got a message to Daddy Warbucks to rescue her from the pirates.

  No Eileen!!!

  So that’s some of the bad stuff. But President Roosevelt wants everyone to be cheerful and confident, so I will try to think of things I do like about the Palmer Colony.

  Things I Like:

  My teacher is nice, even though she has an odd sense of humor.

  Mountains everywhere help you forget about the mud at your feet.

  No homework for our last two weeks of school.

  More room to grow pumpkins (Ha!).

  The sun doesn’t set until eleven and with twilight another hour after that, I have plenty of light to read by at night, even without electricity.

  Mendel—the first kid I met, who happens to be the most talkative, nuisancy know-it-all in all of Alaska—will be moving to a lot twelve miles away, so I won’t have to see him much all summer.As you can probably guess, I had to think hard to come up with an equal number of things to like about living here. We are plagued with measles. Because of them, two families had to stay in Seattle and wait for the next boat, and another family had to stay on the ship when we finally got to Seward. Between measles, mud, and mosquitoes, some family is sure to give up and go home. Maybe there’ll be an empty tent just waiting for you if you don’t like Chicago.

  I wish I could TALK to you instead of writing, because my talking muscles last much longer than my writing finger muscles, and I would love to see your expression when I tell you about everybody throwing up on the St. Mihiel and how we have to carry our chamber pots to the outhouse and how we have to make a lot of noise to keep the bears away.

  What are you going to do this summer? I got empty nail kegs from behind the general store and have planted seeds for pole beans, cabbage, carrots, mint, parsley, and pumpkins. Once we move the tent out of the main camp to our plot number seventy-seven, I will probably spend the rest of the summer digging up roots and rocks and hauling water so we can get a few vegetables planted and harvested before it starts to snow.

  Please, please write and tell me how you like the big city of Chicago. Everyone here picks up their mail at the main camp, so your letters will get to me if you just send it General Delivery, Palmer, Territory of Alaska.

  XOXO,

  Terpsichore J. (as if you knew more than one Terpsichore!)

  P.S. The X on the map shows where we’ll be building our h
ouse.

  P.P.S. WRITE SOON!!!

  CHAPTER 14

  Fire!

  ONE AFTERNOON, AS SOON AS TERPSICHORE AND GLORIA stepped off the school bus, they smelled smoke.

  Gloria sniffed. “Must be burning stumps again.”

  “It doesn’t smell like stumps to me,” Terpsichore said as they passed the first few rows of tents. By the time they reached the fifth row, the smell of smoke had gotten stronger.

  The girls ducked under sheets hanging from a neighbor’s laundry line and broke into a run. The column of smoke led straight to Mother.

  Mother stood outside the Johnsons’ tent, holding Matthew, who was howling like a fire engine. Cally and Polly jumped up and down like agitated tree frogs. “A fire! A fire in the oven.”

  Terpsichore skidded to a stop and gripped her mother’s arm. “Mom, are you okay? What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. When I restarted the woodstove myself for the first time, it spewed out smoke. The cake I’d planned is ruined, but at least we all got out in time.”

  When Terpsichore started toward the tent, Mother grabbed her by the collar.

  “Don’t go in yet!”

  “If it’s just smoke, not flames, we have to air out the tent,” Terpsichore said, securing the tent flap in the open position.

  Holding her nose as the smoke billowed out, Terpsichore found a pot holder and opened the oven door. She darted back, waving her pot holder to diffuse the smoke.

  Gloria dove toward the stove and shoved the door shut with a clang. “I bet it’s the damper. Your father must have closed it when the morning fire went out, to keep the heat in the tent, and when your mother lit another fire to bake something, the smoke couldn’t get up the stovepipe.” She dragged a chair to a spot in front of the stove and climbed up. She held out a hand. “Pot holder,” she said.

  Terpsichore handed up a pot holder and Gloria leaned over the stove to turn the damper handle on the stovepipe so it was vertical, to the open position.